Amelia Court House
April 4-5,1865
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Amelia Court House, VA
Updated Thursday, July 29, 2010 8:20 PM
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If you look on a map Amelia Court House is the closest place to equal distance from both Richmond and Petersburg that Lee could hope to gather his scattered forces at. The collapse at Five Forks came so suddenly and was so unexpected that there was no time to organize a proper retreat. Confederates who weren’t killed or captured just had to move and do so right away.
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Lee’s forces were essentially divided into three columns, one from Richmond, another from Petersburg moving down the north side of the Appomattox River and a second column from Petersburg moving down the south side of the river. Lee hoped to get to Amelia Court House, regroup and march down to Burkeville where he could entrain for Danville.
Lee was hoping to get a train load of food at Amelia Court House but the train turned out to be full of ammunition with only a couple of cars of food. He also was saddled with a one thousand wagons loaded with all kinds of stuff, like furniture and what not. What Lee didn’t know was that at least half of the wagons also contained food.
The Quartermaster in Richmond has been pilloried for generations because he sent bullets instead of beans to Amelia Courthouse. I have begun to question this lately; as the Confederate Army left Richmond the Quartermaster opened the supply dumps and handed out full packs with three days rations to the passing soldiers. As far as he knew, the Soldiers should have arrived in Amelia Court House still carrying at least one day’s rations if not two. He could not have known about the condition of the men coming up from Petersburg.
The Quartermaster did not have a lot of time to get a train loaded and on its way before he had to fire the remaining supplies: when the Confederate line collapsed it collapsed quickly. Lee’s plans were to regroup in Amelia Court House and turn south to Burkeville. The Quartermaster arranged for another train loaded with food to meet the army in Burkeville, the same train that Lee’s men met up with in Rice’s Station and again in Farmville. Given what he knew it is not unreasonable to think that the Quartermaster figured they would need ammunition more than food at Amelia in case they had to fight their way to Burkeville. He could not have known that most of the Soldiers coming in from Petersburg left the lines without any food at all.
The first units to Amelia ate up the few car loads of rations the Quartermaster had sent. These were probably men from Richmond or from the Petersburg column moving on the north side of the river. The southern Petersburg column had to fight its way to Amelia and arrived too late to get fed. Lee in desperation lay over an extra day in Amelia while teams of scroungers went out to the surrounding countryside looking for food. They didn’t find any.
This pause allowed the Union army, which was moving south of the Confederates, roughly following the Southside railroad, to block Lee from turning toward Burkeville. The trainload of food left out of Burkeville ahead of the Union army and stopped in Rice’s Depot. At this point the train crew must have been winging it trying to figure out what Lee might do next because there wasn’t anyway for them to communicate with Confederate Army, and they made a pretty good guess.
While in Amelia a wagon train of more than a thousand wagons also congregated with Lee’s army. This wagon train was to play a significant role in everything that happened once the army left Amelia.
I have been speculating about why Lee's men didn't find the food in the wagons, I think that the teamsters lied about the contents of the wagons when asked because they wanted to keep the food, and also the valuables, for themselves. Something that isn’t talked about much is that all of the teamsters were either blacks or poor whites with no stake in the Confederate cause. There were actually two groups of wagons. The first were army wagons loaded by the Quartermaster in Richmond to support the army and the second loaded by the wealthy families of Richmond trying to keep their valuables out of the hands of the damned Yankees.
By 1865 there was nothing in the South more valuable than a barrel of flour. In the panicked last moments of Confederate Richmond the rich were able to board the last train out of town along with the fleeing Government. They loaded whatever wagons they had on hand with furniture, the family silver, china and all of the horded food from the larder. These were the richest, most powerful families of the rebellion but they could not take all of this stuff on the train so they packed it at a run and stuck a slave on the seat and told him to drive everything to Danville or Lynchburg.
Now try to see things from the slave’s point of view, he is sitting of a wagon full of valuables and the world is collapsing around him. The city is on fire and everyone is running or run off already, you’re supposed to drive to some place you’ve never been just so you can remain a slave. I don’t think so. There would never be a better time to plan an escape. The only problem would be the war. The only clear road out of town would be the same road the Confederate Army was following to Amelia Court House.
The other group of wagons was the army wagons. The Quartermaster had sent a train on ahead with ammunition and two carloads of food, and had handed out three days rations to all of the soldiers who went past the stores. He even arranged for a trainload of food to meet the army in Burkeville so he has been doing a pretty good job of covering his bases. The question becomes what did he put in the wagons?
What would you have loaded on the wagons? It turns out that half of the wagons were carrying food. We know this because the Union cavalry overran the wagons at Sailor’s Creek and found the food. The Union army hadn’t been eating very well either, the Confederate collapse and the subsequent chase hadn’t given the Union supply corps a chance to get things into motion before the whole army was off and running. And they were running directly away from the Union supply depot at City Point. When the Union Cavalry found the food during the Battle of Sailor’s Creek they stopped fighting, sat down and ate. So here’s the obvious question, why didn’t the Confederates find the food while they were stopped at Amelia Court House?
I have to believe that somebody went over to the wagons and asked, “Do you have any food?”
The teamsters must have said, “No.”
Why? Well again, put yourself in the teamster’s shoes, if you say yes the soldiers are going to take it, all of it. When they get to a place with more food they aren’t going to give any of it to you, so you have to watch out for yourself. The war is defiantly coming to a head and a teamster sitting up there on his wagon can’t be sure of what might happen next. The rich man’s slave is in much the same boat as the teamster only worse, he doesn’t want anybody to start rooting around in the wagons or they will find the valuables stashed in amongst the furniture, if that happens there will be a kayos of looting and the slave would probably end up dead. So the wagon drivers lied. Lee lost a day of march on the Union, and his army began to melt away due to hunger.
Next: Jetersville